-
W
- Celebrities
From left: Daniele Luppi, Norah Jones, Brian Burton, and Jack White.
May 17: Danger Mouse
May 2011
Shortly after releasing his epochal Grey Album in 2004, Danger Mouse
(real name Brian Burton, a cofounder of Gnarls Barkley and, more
recently, Broken Bells) had a serendipitous meeting with Italian
composer Daniele Luppi. The two forged a quick bond over a mutual love
of spaghetti Western scores—“We were fascinated by the darker tracks of
the Sixties and Seventies soundtracks,” says Luppi—and were soon taking
meandering drives around Los Angeles and hatching a collaborative dream
project: to write their own choir-backed orchestral pop opus for the
same musicians once employed by Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone.
Recorded at Rome’s cavernous Forum Studios with vintage instruments
(bartered with bottles of wine), the album crescendoed when Jack White
and Norah Jones added vocals to six of the pair’s haunting, ethereal
arrangements. The result, Rome (out May 17), is a 15-track sonic
dreamscape that just begs for the repeat button. “The Rose With the
Broken Neck” is a warbled rambler that echoes White’s hiccupy, fearful
falsetto. Though the project took five years to complete, Burton says he
“never worried about it because the kind of record we were trying to
make wouldn’t go out of style.”
- Keywords
- When
